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Anyone still playing on Cassette decks?

To make my last week short story:
My anesthesia professor gave me some conferences on tapes about 80, I was so curious that I went online right away searching for a decent deck at a good price, but locally I found a guy selling a Yamaha KX-390, he was asking $40, I offered $25 he took it!
I came home all the types were ok, but I start wondering how music tapes will sound trough my harbeth/luxman combo, I remembered that but mistake I ordered a cowboy Junkies album
on amazon, i put it on, an i have been amaze how satisfying tapes could be still, on times where people are looking for HD tracks...
Wondering if any of you will excellent TT and DACs comp based systems, still feel joy playing tapes?

Now i am trying to look for a better deck and studio recorded cassettes in good condition, i want to give a try to the format again, I realized that I enjoying changing formats and sources on my set up.

A good cassette deck advice will be highly appreciated.

Regards to you all.
128x128mountainsong
glenfihi
525 posts
 
Yes indeed, mostly dubbing tapes to cd or directly into my computer made long ago on a Technics cassette deck and then Sony 707 ES deck. Playing them back now on the best of the bunch, a Nakamichi DR-8 unit. Always using good tapes yielded good results many years later. No, not cd level buy enjoyable still. After all it is still about the music. For myself music from "back in the day", when music was the most fun coming from the best groups ever. Of course every one feels the same about their music.

I loved recording music from my LP's to cassette but especially reel to reel. Great music, great gear, at least the best I could afford, most fun ever. Connects you to the music and the equipment. Which is why a love this hobby all the more. Have fun.
qdrone
1,041 posts
 
Mine is in storage but i have to say that the tapes i made on my Luxman using DBX back in the mid 80's rivaled anything on CD. Yes they sounded awesome and when I go looking for a reel to reel it must have a dbx noise reduction option.
mapman's avatar
mapman
22,582 posts
 
I have a similar Yamaha cassette deck in my system. I use it on occasion to play cassettes I recorded years ago on various decks I have owned over the years, or to transfer that music to CD and/or music server using a Denon CD recorder, but I do not use it often. Background noise levels have always been the main weakness of cassette sound. Other than that, many cassette source tracks that end up on my music server in rotation with all the rest sound good enough to listen to, but I can usually tell the source when I listen usually due to hiss noise levels.

I do like that I can hear the distinct "flavor" of the sound of the various vintage gear I used to record those tapes over the years when I listen to these tapes on my current rig, which is neat. Most have a distinctive sound, like many vintage recordings recorded on vintage gear does, but as a whole these recordings are very enjoyable, though perhaps more inherently flawed technically.
marakanetz's avatar
marakanetz
5,473 posts
 
I've stopped wasting my time. Have more things to be done at my early 40's.
ejlif's avatar
ejlif
1,377 posts
 
Yes I do, I have a lot of music on cassette that is the only copy I have. I don't spend a lot of time with it but its nice to know that I can still ply certain things if I want to and the sound is pretty good too a lot better than I remembered thinking it was back in the day. Cassette is making a real comeback there are a lot of new releases done only on limited runs of cassette and many old cassettes have quite a value on the used market as well.
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